Okay, so I decided to just publicly yell about Blackspark and the Jettwins.
Blackspark, currently pregnant enough that it’s visible, runs across the Jettwins and Sentinel on a non-Cybertron planet. Sentinel, as always, is busy being the abusive embodiment of toxic masculinity and Functionalist Autobot ideals, backing the twins into a corner and yelling at them for something trivial.
Blackspark responds by marching up and punching Sentinel in the face, as hard as he physically can, to which the twins respond instinctively by trying to stop him. Blackspark, rather than fighting them, pulls a trick he’s recently learned and pulses all the carrier-vibes in his field at them as strongly as he can. The twins, who’ve never met a carrier before and didn’t even know Cybertronians could get pregnant, go from impulsive defensiveness to barely-standing compliance, and Blackspark leads them off by their servos.
Before they get un-dazed, he cuffs them both, just in case, and locks them in the washracks so he can get off the planet without any interference. Gravescratch misses this, opens the door to the washracks to check what’s making noise inside, and is confronted by two hissing, freaked-out Autobot Seekers.
“Blackspark, what the slagging Pit”
“rescue mission”
“…sure, fine, try not to let them shoot you.”
Once out of chasing range, Blackspark goes and opens the door himself, and the twins, freaked out, start posturing and trying to look brave. Posturing like grounders, too, no flier body language. No wings. Considering he saw them fly down and land, that’s weird.
Then they tell Blackspark that he’s not going to get them to talk because Sentinel helped them practice for interrogations, and Blackspark’s field roars.
Since they’re busy calling him all sorts of names between the posturing, Blackspark just sits down in front of them, calm, and waits, pulsing care-reassurance-friendliness-carrier-protectiveness, until they get tired, stop swearing, and get confused.
Once they start to calm down, he reaches up with both servos and starts petting their audials, ignoring the half-sparked attempts to bite him. He’s being as unthreatening as he possibly can, and they might not quite know about carrying, but they’ve been to Earth, they know how pregnancy works for humans, and there’s something -someone– else in his field.
This is thoroughly confusing for the Jettwins, of course. They’re still together, for one thing. They’ve always been told they’d be split up if they were captured, they’ve fought nearly to self-destruction to avoid being captured, and yet they’re still together. And their captor, in addition to not wearing any sort of badge, is petting them. Stroking them, gently, just their audials, field purring, giving them the sort of affection they’ve never had from anyone except each other.
Before they quite realize themselves, they end up in Blackspark’s lap. Then the cuffs are off, then they start feeling the sparkling stirring against them and the tiny baby greetings reaching out through Blackspark’s field, and that’s it. Adoption complete. They’re thoroughly charmed and 100% convinced that he’s not up to anything. They’ve never had someone treat them like this, and they love it.
Once he’s figured out that they aren’t about to try and escape, Blackspark reaches up, turns on the shower, and sets about cleaning them up, muttering about how filthy they are.
Gravescratch probably gets a very thorough inspection as soon as he’ll stand still for them. That’s a good mental image, him sitting with that Look cats get when they’re only tolerating something, rolling his optics towards Blackspark as Jetfire pries his mouth open to look inside and Jetstorm plays with one of his secondary arms.
Once they’re feeling a bit more confident, Blackspark takes them to someone with a file of new alt modes for them to flip through, gets them an alt mode with actual wings instead of the Autobot-styled grounder shape. Let them use the body language their Seeker subconsciousness is trying to use. They may never quite fit in with born Seekers, but that’s all right, better this than trying to cram themselves into a grounder-shaped slot when their frames want to fly.
And then they meet Sentinel again. He starts in on them, calling them traitors, deserters-
And stops when the wings go up. They didn’t have those before. And when did they stop filing their fangs down? Where did they learn to posture like that, like the Decepticons he keeps calling them, like the enemy soldiers he loathes? Where did they learn to stand up to him?
…when did Safeguard get such a menacing grin?
That’s how Sentinel gets his aft kicked halfway to the Pit and back and then thrown off a cliff. Y’know, like he deserves.
That’s also how Blackspark’s kid gets two very enthusiastic uncles/cousins/brothers, and how said kid ends up being lifted, Lion King style, complete with background chanting, shortly after birth. Also with mutterings of “my weird accidental sons are nerds” from Blackspark.
See, what the race-to-the-bottom people forget is one simple fact:
The average cost to replace a minimum-wage retail employee, according to a study by the Center for American Progress, is $3,328. And that’s a lowball. Basically, any time somebody quits or is fired, it costs the company money. A lot of money. New employees are also less productive (because it takes people longer to do things they are less familiar with). Employee churn is very expensive.
The Wal-Mart (and Amazon) model is to consider employees as expendable robots. They completely dismiss the costs of hiring, onboarding, training, reduced productivity during the training period, etc, because “these people are cheap.”
Costco treats employees as “appreciating assets” – that is to say, employees become more valuable over time. Therefore, it is better and more productive to only replace employees who aren’t doing their jobs.
Let’s take a warehouse worker in a large facility. A new worker will waste time remembering which aisle it is, may take a longer route there, etc. Somebody who has been there a year has it down cold. They’ll pick the item far quicker than the new person. This improves productivity, which improves profits.
But for some reason a lot of companies don’t seem to grasp this.
All they see is the paycheck, when the actual figure they should be looking at is the profit a worker produces. That is to say, the difference between productivity and pay. Raising pay causes people to stick around and become more productive, which actually increases the profit in the long term.
We need to stop thinking so short term.
Oh my god. Costco employees get paid better than starting teachers in my school district.
(Which is not to say they should be paid less. We should be paid more.)
It’s really obvious that you don’t follow the blog, or you would have seen 4 posts ago about how some advice simply cannot be given online. You also didn’t read the FAQ, even though the link to ask a question says “please read the FAQ”, because if you had then you would see firstly that it can take weeks to get an answer, but secondly that I cannot give medical advice about a pet over the internet that I have not seen. It’s illegal and unethical, I can’t see it, treat it, or do anything but worry about it which is absolutely unfair.
So you say “I don’t mean to bother you” but you made no avoid bothering me and guess what, you have.
I hope the puppy does okay and I hope you actually pick up a phone to seek immediate, local veterinary advice.
A puppy not eating and being too weak to stand up sounds extremely serious. You need urgent advice from an actual local vet who can actually treat the puppy.
I mean you don’t want to give them a ton everyday. But mixing garlic in bird feed weekly or bi-weekly has way more benefits than cons. I give mine extra hot spice with garlic in it to keep out the rodents because birds can’t taste the flavor and it prevents parasites and boosts their immune system 😄
Garlic and onions are toxic to just about all mammals except humans, but not to birds. They didn’t need to be toxic to birds because birds don’t dig them up and try to eat them.
Peppers don’t burn birds because they were designed not to. Evolution was aiming to make the peppers only edible by birds so mammals would leave them alone and birds would eat them to spread the seeds.
Without a link to a specific video I cannot say for 100% sure that what you’re thinking of is the same thing I’m responding to, but it’s probably a courtship dance! Emus are just as extra in their own way as birds of paradise.
According to this paper, “during the courtship, both genders start
strutting and circling; ruffling out their feathers and
cocking their heads in a shy posture. The male starts
a mating dance with slow, snake-like back-and-forth
movements of his head while circling around the
female.“ Wikipedia also describes mating behavior (with citations to a paper on emu behavior that I can’t get free access to) as such:
“When courting, females stride around, pulling their neck back while puffing out their feathers and emitting low, monosyllabic calls that have been compared to drum beats. This calling can occur when males are out of sight or more than 50 metres (160 ft) away. Once the male’s attention has been gained, the female circles her prospective mate at a distance of 10 to 40 metres (30 to 130 ft). As she does this, she looks at him by turning her neck, while at the same time keeping her rump facing towards him. If the male shows interest in the parading female, he will move closer; the female continues the courtship by shuffling further away but continuing to circle him.[40][41]If a male is interested, he will stretch his neck and erect his feathers, then bend over and peck at the ground. He will circle around and sidle up to the female, swaying his body and neck from side to side, and rubbing his breast against his partner’s rump. Often the female will reject his advances with aggression, but if amenable, she signals acceptance by squatting down and raising her rump”
However, the one thing I’m not seeing in these descriptions is the jumping up and down you described. I looked up some videos, and I’m guessing this is representative of what you’re talking about:
I wasn’t sure if this counted as courtship behavior because the vertical leaps also seemed to be coupled with lunges / kicks, but I ran the video past a couple of zookeepers who have worked with emu and they all think it’s probably still a sexy dance.
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